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Student Experience Blog: January 2013

It is almost the end of my last winter term at The College of Idaho. So far it has been a very relaxing winter term for me. Unlike the last few years, I decided to take only one credit this semester, instead of the 3-4 credits that I normally take.

I have been taking a German class this semester and it has been great so far. I love languages and German is my favourite. We have some really great professors at the College and the language department is no different.

I’m back on a snowy C of I campus and am happy to be home from a whirlwind three weeks. London and Paris were great—there are a million things to do and see—but it’s good to be back. There’s nothing quite like coming back to a place that’s full of your friends.

I've heard a lot about the coagulative properties of the Family Dinner: families who sit down and eat dinner and talk about their day together are supposed to be better off than families who eat in front of the TV. I remember posters in middle school touting that "Famlies that Eat Together, Stay Together."

This is my second Winter Term on The College of Idaho campus, so I naively figured going into this January that I'd learned all the most important lessons about this accelerated 4-week period. Then I got back the first day and reminded myself of one very important thing: at C of I, if you're not learning something new or experencing new things every day, then you're doing something very wrong. Just because Winter Term is short doesn't mean there's nothing to be gained from it.

Well, tonight is the last in Paris before we catch the Eurostar back to London tomorrow. My friend Jenette and I celebrated by going out to dinner at an actual restaurant. We've been subsisting largley on the nearby grocery shop, boulangerie, and "big panini place" for the last week, so tonight was a nice break. And since we'd had more than our fair share of baguettes, croissants, and crepes, we went in a different direction and tried out escargot.

So I have always had mixed feelings about winter term here at The College of Idaho. On one end, we concentrate on one class, which is really, really nice, but on the other, we blaze through the term in four weeks. This gets a bit hectic.

Two years ago, I had no idea what an academic conference was. I assumed that professors and researchers just kind of hid in their labs and wrote things that only their obscure peers would read. Two years ago, I didn’t know anything about the active research process across any science, and I couldn’t have imagined that I’d be willing to buy a plane-ticket and drop a massive fee to hang out in a convention center with a bunch of psychologists.

I love Winter Term. Having three-hour classes sounded a little daunting to me, and knocking out credits in just four weeks sounded stressful, but it turns out that it's been everything but stressful. I’m taking two classes: Engineering Analysis and Intro to CAD. They are both on the computer, but that means that I don’t have too much homework outside of class. My first class doesn’t start until the afternoon. But wait, it gets even better: I don’t have any classes at all on Fridays!

It's day four of my Paris trip, and so far I've been alternating between eating pastries and looking at great art. There's an abundance of both in the city of lights. I'm going to have a hard time going back to eating croissants from Albertson's after this trip.

Today I visited the Tuileries, a park in the heart of Paris. While I assume it's at its most grand in the springtime, it was impressive in the snow. Thanks to the snow, the ground in the park was just as white as the surrounding buildings, all of which are ornate and noteworthy.